The Tigers spent $214 million to create a mess with their manager insisting he’s going to harm their defense in the face of reality and, by extension, harm their pitching staff by shifting Miguel Cabrera to third base to accommodate Prince Fielder.

This was in response to the season-ending knee injury to DH Victor Martinez.

Logic would dictate that the best course of action would be to have Fielder and Cabrera share first base and DH duties and to play the defensively minded Brandon Inge and Don Kelly at third base.

But logic has little to do with a stubborn, old-school baseball guy like manager Jim Leyland whose hardline statement that Cabrera is going to play third base appears, for now, as if it’s going to result in Cabrera actually playing third base.

To compound matters, Leyland has also said he’s not going to pull Cabrera for defense late in games.

Whether or not it’s bluster on the part of the manager to get his star player’s ego in check and wait until spring training to talk him and Fielder into sharing DH duties is the question. Will the sight of balls bouncing through the infield at a ridiculous rate and the pitchers’ collective anger trump Leyland’s, Cabrera’s and Fielder’s individual desires and self-interests?

In the normal world, the answer would be yes.

But this isn’t the normal world. It’s baseball.

The Tigers’ biggest rivals in the AL Central, the Indians, made a smart signing for $211 million less than what the Tigers guaranteed for Fielder when they signed veteran Casey Kotchman to a 1-year, $3 million contract.

No one is going to compare Kotchman to Fielder offensively, but defensively, he’s far superior to the immobile Fielder/Cabrera and, if last season is any indication, he’s no longer a liability at the plate as he was in the two seasons prior to 2011.

Because Kotchman fits into the Indians lineup and they’re not creating a redundancy by putting any player out of position to stuff him in, it’s a more reasonable signing than the Tigers’ decision to buy a Lamborghini (Fielder) to replace their damaged Porsche (Martinez) with the lack of space in the garage to make it sensible.

The Indians had been facing the prospect of playing the disappointing Matt LaPorta at first base with catcher Carlos Santana also seeing time at the position. Now they can play Kotchman relatively regularly.

As long as the Tigers don’t move forward with the charade of playing Cabrera at third base, then the Fielder signing is going to help them a great deal; but if they insist on implementing such a defensive catastrophe and do so because of Leyland’s obstinate nature, then it’s a disaster waiting to happen no matter how many homers and massive OPS numbers Fielder and Cabrera combine to provide.

The Tigers are going to disrupt their contact-based pitching staff by hardheadedly concerning themselves more with Cabrera’s and Fielder’s happiness and Leyland’s contrarian nature. The Indians are adhering to their needs by signing a player who slides neatly into their on-field and financial structure.

It can be argued that the Indians made a better overall signing with Kotchman.